Every Prototype that Led to a Realistic Prosthetic Arm

[Narrator] Prosthetic arms for much of the 20th

and 21st century looked like this.

While prosthetic legs were running in the Olympics,

arms were being left behind.

Prosthetics is quite a challenging product to develop.

It's not going to replace or surpass a human hand.

It's a tool ultimately.

And it's there to assist you

and we have to make it extremely functional,

but easy to use.

[Narrator] But since the early 2000s,

private companies, governments and research labs

are developing prostheses that are more functional

and a lot more advanced than previous designs.

Wired talked with Easton LaChappelle founder

and CEO of Unlimited Tomorrow

to understand how he designed,

tested and adopted his prosthetic arm.

So what are the options available

for those looking for prosthetic arms?

The landscape of prosthetic offerings today

is quite a spectrum.

There's very simple passive devices.

They look like a hand,

but they don't have any type of movement

or function beyond just aesthetics or cosmetics.

And next here is the body powered.

So this is the classic kind of hook and claw system

usually you shrug a shoulder, kind of move your body

to be able to close and open claw.

And then the next class is quite a wide one.

You go into the myoelectric, more robotic class.

And then beyond that you get into the research level

where these are these brain control devices

that universities are developing.

[Narrator] So the big question was,

how can you design an arm that's functional

while also being affordable?

Easton started with this design.

This is really what started it all.

This is the very first robotic hand I made when I was 14.

And as you can see, there's a lot of simple household items.

It's a lot of Legos and electrical tubing at this point.

It's very basic, but this essentially validated

that we could use motors and tendons

to open and close fingers.

[Narrator] Next was this model.

I made this back in 2012,

and this was really the infancy

of the consumer 3D printing world.

These were essentially kind of hot glue machines,

that extruded material and sometimes they work,

sometimes they didn't,

you can see it's a very similar concept,

that we have these servo motors

that essentially hold these tendons, these fishing line.

For the increased grip,

I decided to put these little finger pads.

And this was far more functional.

I could actually pick up things accurately

and do a little bit more real life tasks with it.

[Narrator] Their next prototype was a little more Sci-Fi.

It used an EEG headset,

which measure brainwaves to control the prosthesis.

So the next prototype is what I call Robo Arm.

And this was a lot of the concepts

kind of rolled into one here.

I found a lot of benefit working with tendon systems

compared to other mechanical designs,

a lot of other devices on the market use linkages.

And so then when we looked at tendons

and especially the individual finger joints,

essentially we wanna eliminate the cognitive bandwidth

that someone experiences when using a prosthesis

and experiment with how do we merge man and machine?

Can we tap into the brain without a surgery?

Can we use external headsets?

Or is it best to go into the nerves,

the muscles, kind of localized area

to be able to control the prosthesis?

[Narrator] Their next design went back to the basics,

getting rid of the headset

and focusing instead on a 3D printed material

with a tendon system design.

So this is like I'm learning from years of prototyping,

bundling it all into a single design here.

The socket is the hardest part of a prosthesis,

and if it doesn't fit right, no one's gonna use it.

And this was actually replica for a small girl named Momo.

We would send webcams and 3D scanners,

and Xbox Kinect down to her house in Florida

where her mother would scan her residual limb.

And then we would generate a socket,

which is how the device attaches to the person.

And then there's a small bulb band

that would read your muscles.

And then from there, she's able to open

and close the hand, change the grips.

And we still utilize today of how can

we create these natural feedback loops to the brain.

We want to supplement the brain.

We don't want to take control

or to create a secondary brain.

We wanna tap into exactly how a human arm typically works.

This is the TrueLimb.

This is our first product we launched in June of 2020.

And when you look at this,

this is essentially robotic hands.

So each of these fingers have individual finger motion

that you can see these small tendons in here,

we have about 14 joints that act independent.

[Narrator] So how does it work?

How can people with missing limbs

use their muscles to move the device?

It's one thing to read data from the human body,

which we do through sensors,

but then how do we input data back into the body

and into the brain?

How do we provide feedback of,

are you touching something that's hot or cold?

Are you picking up something with delicate touch

or are you actually really grasping it?

[Narrator] It starts here with their feedback system.

We wrap the entire limb with a large array

of these sensors and we look for very small minute changes.

We try and go as simple as possible.

Right now we use a vibration motor

similar to what's in cell phones.

[Narrator] The use of 3D printed materials

helps keeps costs down, but in the beginning,

the 3D printed landscape looked

a lot differently than today.

3D printing has come a long way since I started back

when it's from the most simple 3D printers

made out of laser cut wood and a very simple plastic.

It looks incredible.

But what we're finding is that it's very brutal.

And so we kept having the pinky break.

It's what you're gonna bang everything against on a counter.

And then we kinda reached the point where,

this is just not gonna work for a prosthetic device.

This is not durable enough.

And then so we started looking into

what's happening in the landscape of 3D printing.

And that's actually where we first started talking with HP.

They created this incredible machine

that prints in full color,

but also in a very strong nylon material.

[Narrator] Innovations in 3D printing

meant stronger materials which hopefully translates

to more resilient devices.

So what's next for Unlimited Tomorrow?

We're constantly learning, constantly doing research,

data collection that helps influence

the future of the product.

And so that's something that's really high on our list.

It's just to continue to expand

and just make this more and more accessible.

And we're looking at forms of exoskeletons

and other types of technology to use robotics

and a lot of our foundational technology

to help give people empowerment

and accessibility and mobility across the world.

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